The United States continuously under estimated the magnitude
of what it would take to rebuild Iraq. Originally, America had no plan for any
kind of reconstruction believing that there would only be a humanitarian
situation in the country after the 2003 invasion such as refugees, and food
shortages. When the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) took over it then
began a massive, multi-billion dollar rebuilding plan, but emphasized large
infrastructure projects that had little immediate impact upon Iraqis. By 2005,
the U.S. began switching to local reconstruction efforts that were supposed to
be linked to a comprehensive counterinsurgency program, but that took two years
to fully come to fruition. During the entire time what was neglected was the
ability of the Iraqi government to manage and maintain the infrastructure that
was being built and refurbished for it. Billions of dollars in power plants,
water facilities, schools, etc. were being turned over to Iraqi authorities who
either didn’t want or couldn’t run them. The Americans eventually tried to
address this issue, but it came too little too late, resulting in massive
waste.
By 2006 the U.S. had spent $90 mil on the Dora power plant,
but it was constantly breaking down due to the lack of maintenance and political
pressure to produce as much electricity as possible (Wikipedia)
It took years for the U.S. to understand the importance of
building government capacity in Iraq. Capacity is the ability of the
authorities to effectively and efficiently run the country. In the fall of
2004, an officer from the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) found a water treatment plant outside of Hillah in Babil province that had $5 million in repairs done to it. The contract for the facility only included
fixing it, so it was never connected to the city’s water system, and Hillah’s
municipal workers were never trained on how to operate it. The U.S. had not
transferred the plant to Iraqi control, and it was simply sitting idle and
decaying. By 2006, $90 million had been spent on the Dora power plant that
provided most of the electricity for Baghdad. In August, there was an
electrical surge that knocked the facility out of service. Technicians there
were not doing regular maintenance. The director generals at the Electricity
Ministry told the managers at Dora that they should swap parts between the
generators to keep them running, which wore them down quicker, and led to more
breakdowns. The Ministry also forbade the buying of replacement parts unless there
was an emergency, and that plants could not be shut down for routine repairs.
This was all the result of pressure from Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to
produce as much power as possible. Basically, short-term political
considerations were undermining the long-term health of the electrical network.
These were two glaring examples of the shortcoming of the American
reconstruction effort in Iraq. Many contracts only focused upon the immediate
facility, and included nothing on maintaining them. The U.S. had pushed the
rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure, and forgotten about the
institutions and training necessary to run them. The result was that by
late-2005 the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) found
that facilities, which the United States had spent billions on, were breaking
down. These revelations slowly, but surely got the Americans to begin to
address this problem, but it was never enough.
As early as the summer of 2003, the U.S. began training
Iraqis to sustain the projects that were being worked on, but it ran into all
kinds of problems. One was that USAID found out that the competence of Iraqi
workers varied so widely that it was hard to set up any single training program
that would apply to all of them. This added extra time and costs to try to
include as many Iraqis as possible. Another was that training took place at
each individual facility worked on by the Americans. In Iraq’s top down
government system, those local facilities had little to no autonomy, and had to
rely upon the ministries for everything. If the Baghdad agencies were not
included then the assistance would go for naught. Third, there was no real
coordination between the various American groups working on training. Therefore
it was largely done on an ad hoc basis. Finally, maintenance was not included
in this effort, something that USAID tried to warn the CPA about. CPA head Paul
Bremer did not listen. As USAID Mission Director Spike Stephenson said, Bremer
was only interested in buildings things, not sustaining or maintaining them. This
would set the stage for major issues down the road. Not enough Iraqi workers were
trained to adequately run the infrastructure that was being turned over to
them. There was extreme dysfunction between the district, provincial, and
central governments, with Baghdad trying to centralize power in their hands,
and ignoring all the other levels. The U.S. tried to overcome those
differences, but were only partially successful. That made it hard for all the
projects the Coalition was working on to be maintained by the Iraqis, because a
school built at the district level may not be accepted by the Education Ministry,
and it would either sit idle or run out of supplies and funding as a result. That
led to benchmarks for services not being met, and billions in dollars going to
waste. By 2005, the U.S. became afraid that many of the projects it was leaving
for the Iraqis would be unused, because it had not emphasized sustainment.
The U.S. response was to set up a number of organizations to
address capacity building, but they all fell short of expectations. In
late-2005, the State Department created the National Capacity Development
Program, which focused upon 12 main ministries that included 65% of the
government workforce, and 74% of the budget. The Iraq Reconstruction and
Management Office was supposed to coordinate this effort, but it proved too big
for it to handle. In March 2006, the Ministerial Capacity Team was put into
place to manage projects by bringing together all the main stakeholders. That
summer, the Ministerial Assistance Teams were set up to build capacity within
the ministries of the new government that was taking office after the December
2005 elections. Around the same time, the U.S. Embassy put together the Joint
Task Force for Capacity Development, which had almost the same job as the
Ministerial Capacity Team of bringing together all the Iraqi and American
agencies involved in reconstruction. Its lack of authority meant that it had
little impact. USAID began the Tatweer program to train workers in the
Planning, Finance, Oil, Electricity, and Water Ministries. It took a long time
for it to get up and running, and in the end, the U.S. lacked the personnel to
make it effective. The U.S. Embassy then created the Joint Executive Steering
Committee that placed more advisers within the Oil, Finance, and Electricity
Ministries. They came into conflict with the existing advisers, and the Iraqis
did not like them either, so it ended up being a failure. By 2007, the State Department
was trying to shut down many of these groups, because it wanted to consolidate
all of their work within the embassy. An audit that year by the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) found that the U.S. lacked clear goals in building the capacity of the Iraqi government, and that it often changed its goals,
which undermined the effort. Like most of the reconstruction of Iraq, the
Americans approached capacity building in an ad hoc fashion. That meant they
were never able to fully meet the challenge.
In late-2006, the U.S. began focusing upon Iraq’s budget
execution, because without adequate funding Baghdad would not be able to
maintain its infrastructure and increase its services. Overlapping authority and red tape made the
transfer of money within the Iraqi bureaucracy difficult at best. The Planning
Ministry had to approve all requests for funding, before the Finance Ministry
would release the money. Like every other ministry, almost every decision at
Planning and Finance had to go all the way to the minister himself before
anything could be done. The U.S. tried to speed things up by placing dozens of
advisers within the Planning Ministry to help with the approval process. The
Americans also began daily assessments of budget performance, while Deputy
Premier Barham Saleh started holding weekly meetings on the budget. This had
some positive short-term effects. In 2005, Baghdad was able to spend $1.432 billion of its $6.316 billion capital budget, 23% of the total. In 2006, it
spent slightly more at $1.615 billion, but that was out of $8.312 billion, only
19%. Finally, in 2007, that jumped to $3.435 billion out of $12.168 billion
total, 28%. As Iraq’s budget has increased however, the execution rate has
declined. In 2009, it spent an all time high of 89% of its capital budget. That then went down to 78% in 2010, and 33% in 2011. Capital budgets are of
utmost importance to Iraq, because that is the money that goes into investing
in infrastructure and the like. The gradual growth in spending in capital
outlays showed that the United States was successful for a time in building
capacity within the Planning and Finance Ministry. Yet, as the sums gradually
increased with the growth of Iraq’s oil exports and the international price of
petroleum, the bureaucracy was again overwhelmed by the task, and the execution
rate has gone back down to almost what it was in 2007.
The failure of the United States to prioritize capacity
building and sustainment within the Iraqi government right after the invasion
was a major setback. The U.S. eventually tried to address the problem, but it
didn’t get a sustained effort until 2006, three years after the overthrow of
Saddam. Not only that, but the Americans always took an ad hoc approach, and
lacked a unified plan. That didn’t mean there wasn’t some progress, and Iraqis
didn’t increase their institutional know how, but the major deficiencies remain
to this day. The bureaucracy is still incapable of spending all the money
available to it, and services do not meet demand. The U.S. had grand plans for
Iraq, but again and again it came up short.
SOURCES
Christoff, Joseph, “Securing, Stabilizing, And Rebuilding
Iraq, Testimony Before the Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on State,
Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, U.S. House of Representatives”
Government Accountability Office, 10/30/07
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard
Lessons,” 1/22/09
Tijara Provincial Economic Growth Program, “Assessment of
Current and Anticipated Economic Priority In Iraq,” United States Agency for
International Development, 10/4/12
United States Government Accountability Office, “Progress
Report: Some Gains Made, Updated Strategy Needed,” June 2008
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